


The Fire Golems of Central

by sibley (ferns)



Series: Tikkun Olam [5]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Jewish, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Gen, Golems, Jewish Character, Jewish Mythology, Jewish mysticism, M/M, and so does the firestorm bond, firestorm matrix, kinda? metahumans still exists, thats a real tag? wow
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-20
Updated: 2018-02-20
Packaged: 2019-03-21 21:31:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13749642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Jax has always had a knack for magic.Lily was the first golem that Jax saw be made. Ray was the first one he ever met, Stein’s armored semi-bodyguard who never lowered his faceplate. He talked eagerly to Jax and Stein about science and Jax never had any reason to question if Ray was really human or not until he watched him die-only to see him step out of Stein’s workshop a few days later with his wounds sealed up with wax.





	The Fire Golems of Central

**Author's Note:**

> slams my hands down on the table. _car golems_ , you guys. _car golems._

Lily was the first golem that Jax saw be made. Ray was the first one he ever met, Stein’s armored semi-bodyguard who never lowered his faceplate. He talked eagerly to Jax and Stein about science and Jax never had any reason to question if Ray was really human or not until he watched him die-only to see him step out of Stein’s workshop a few days later with his wounds sealed up with wax.

Jax had watched Lily be made from a distance, with Stein’s permission. He’d seen her form sculpted from wax and clay, the alphabets of the 221 gates recited dutifully over each and every organ that went into her body. Jax had tried to commit all of it to memory, heartbeat loud in his ears as he watched Stein sculpt his new daughter’s facial features from clay and bind her limbs together with straw as Clarissa wrapped white cloth around where her eyes would one day open.

Jax closed his own eyes when Stein bid him to, holding his breath as he heard the sounds of breathing, the sounds of virgin soil being packed into the golem’s mouth along with a scrap of cloth. Then the names of God, which Jax tried to commit to memory. The next sounds he heard were of Lily waking up about an hour later, of Stein and Clarissa crying as they wrapped a blanket around her shoulders.

Not wanting to intrude, Jax had crept away, back to his room and away from the happy family. It didn’t feel right to be there for this. He wouldn’t be Lily’s brother, although perhaps they could one day come to view each other that way. He officially met her the next day, marveling at the way her flesh felt just like his when she shook his hand, nothing like the clay and wax it had been lovingly crafted from.

“I’m Lily,” she had said softly, tilting her head to one side. Her hair looked real too, nothing like the fabric and straw that Jax watched Clarissa labor over for weeks. He could just barely pick out some of the strands that he contributed-the parts that look choppier, less professional. Impossible to see unless you knew what you were looking for, however. “My father tells me your name is… Jefferson?”

Jax rolled his eyes and dropped her hand as he shook his head with a little groan. “Only Grey and Clarissa call me that,” he sighed, “and I’ve been telling them not to for almost a year at this point. You can just call me Jax, everyone else does.”

“Jax,” Lily hummed softly. She rolled it over in her mouth with her clay tongue and pebble teeth, around the cloth tucked away in her cheek. “I like that name. I think we could be great friends.”

They bond over chalk numbers and potential formulas for time travel and Jax’s weak attempts at golem-making, little wax scraps in the shape of bodies that haven’t woken up yet. He’s sure they will one day. Stein always said that he had potential. Jax is sure that means that one day, hopefully soon, his creations will blink themselves to life.

The raid is when he realizes his potential fully. The raid is when he realizes why Stein was always so sure that he’d be a good rabbi one day, if that’s the path that he decided to go down in the future, why Stein and Clarissa always called him their smartest protege, even smarter than Jason when it came to the mysticism and not the science that fueled the rest of their actions. (The Steins and their ability to blend science and magic were famous throughout the Jewish communities of Central, Keystone, Detroit, and Star City, much to Jax’s delight.)

Jason is the one who tells him about the raid. They’re planning on coming to _Jax’s_ neighborhood. Not the one he lives in, but the one he works in when he’s not with his mom or at the Steins’ place. With his shop and his boss and the nice kids that hang out there and his friendly coworkers who are just trying to get by while doing something that they love to do, a difficult feat. Jason, who works for the DEO and STAR Labs and sometimes Mercury Labs, too, all at once. Jason, whose heart belonged to Ronnie just as much as it belonged to science, according to Stein.

Jax is friendly with both of them-he can talk science and engineering with Jason and football with Ronnie, and pester both of them about when they’re going to shut up and get hitched already, since Clarissa and Stein and himself may or may not have a bet on it and if they don’t tie the knot soon Clarissa is going to win. And none of them want that, especially since Jax promised to give all the money he would win to the two of them.

He likes them. They’re good friends. And they’re a part of the fire-web, as Jax calls it. Which means that they’re basically family. As much as Stein and Clarissa and even his own mother.

“What kind of raid?” Jax asks, thinking about the warmth at his fingertips and the clay he keeps in his bedroom for him to play with late at night, carving words of truth into the foreheads and chests of tiny dolls that he squishes moments later and rebuilds. “DEO or ICE or-?”

They’re both, unfortunately, equally likely.

“Both, I think,” Jason says grimly, amber-spiked eyes so similar to Jax’s own, the side effect to their shared powers, narrowing. “I’m-I’m not working with the DEO anymore. Bones got too demanding, it all got to be way too much. And they were cracking down on the metahumans working there, especially the ones that weren’t white, and I couldn’t stay there.”

“Thank you for telling me,” Jax tells him seriously, before he turns around and leaves before any more words can be spoken between them. Jason doesn’t say anything, and Jax finds out a few days later that he and Ronnie skipped town with a promise that they’ll come back to visit them soon. At some point. They swear they will.

Jax runs all the way to his shop and grabs whatever he can-oil and markers and receipt paper and motors and car parts. It’s unorthodox, yes, and he’s sure that somewhere Stein is rolling in his rhetorical grave, but he knows what he’s doing with a kind of surety that he’s rarely felt before. He knows he’s supposed to dress in all white and get virgin soil and water but he can’t afford to waste a second right now. He has to get to work.

It takes him two weeks to get it all prepared. Two weeks of nonstop work, with only the briefest of pauses when he passes out or can’t hold out on going to the bathroom for a second longer. He eats and drinks on the job, hands flying to craft organs and eyes and hands as he speaks the alphabets over every single one. He infuses them with his fear, hardly even aware that he’s doing things Stein has never taught him-after all, isn’t it the legend that golem-making is so rooted in the individual that it is impossible to teach in its perfect entirety, despite Stein’s attempts?

When they come-a group of four, all DEO, with the ICE agents coming the next day, according to the most recent update from Jason-Jax goes out to meet them. His children follow, leaking motor oil, their headlight eyes glowing brightly and their engines so loud it rumbles through their bodies like they are purring. Jax named them all-Emet (Emmy for short), Sefer, Yehuda, and Wormy.

Stein is at home, but that doesn’t mean Jax can’t still feel him there. The fire-bond, their only really useful metahuman power despite Jason’s protests that he _knows_ that if he could just figure out fusion they could do so much more. Stein isn’t the only one, either. Jax can feel Jason and Ronnie where they’re hiding out in Detroit. Can feel Gehenna across the country in California, can feel Lorraine in London, Mick Wong in Chicago, can feel _all_ of them. His family. Behind him, Jax’s car-golems stand up and at attention. Around his feet, his little wax and clay scraps dressed in doll clothes and cloth fragments stand against the wind.

The DEO agents don’t come back. The ICE agents never come. Jax is fairly certain he’s on some kind of watchlist now. He stands at the edge of his neighborhood and looks out at the rest of Central City. His neighborhood isn’t disconnected from it, not at all. The whole _city_ needs protecting. Keystone probably does too. The golems of Central. It’s been years since there were any vigilantes in Central City, and it had been even longer since there had been any effective ones. The idea of being a superhero is appealing, sure, but without any powers… But hell, who needs powers when you’ve got golems?

Emmy makes a chattering noise above his shoulder, the deep growling of her engines a comforting sound. The hard shell of her shoulders makes her the bulkiest of his creations, and the one he made first.

“Hello, you,” Jax says with a smile. He feels the sudden urge to paint flames on all four of them. “How would you like to live up to your predecessor’s names, huh? Get to be great protectors who go down in history like the Golem of Prague? Wouldn’t you like that?”

On his other side, the headlights of Wormy’s eyes flicker. She’s the smallest of her siblings, with mixing beater hands and rolling-chair wheels for feet. She’s fast and little and she tucks her head under Jax’s hand and pushes up into it like a dog would. Jax can feel rather than see or hear Yehuda and Sefer arguing behind them in a language he doesn’t know, something old and forgotten that sounds like the Earth itself mixed with Hebrew words that Jax isn’t quite fluent enough to know.

“Protect it is,” Jax laughs, throwing back his head and drinking in the golden sunlight. Across the city, alone in his office, Martin Stein feels a warm sense of pride bloom in his stomach. Their connection is a two-way street, after all. (Well, considering how many members there were of their web, it was more like a two-way street with hundreds of intersections and about a thousand excitable pedestrians who all wanted to use the street at the expense of the cars.)

The hard and smooth curve of the backs of the golems, made from the hoods of cars, has grown warm in the sun, warm enough to burn, but Jax doesn’t pull his hand away as he touches each one of them in turn, painting a tiny flame insignia onto different parts of their bodies. A symbol of belonging. Like a superhero team would have. It’s kinda cheesy, but who cares? They’re his golems, his children, and they’re gonna be protecting the city with him, aren’t they?

Jax always wanted to be a superhero.


End file.
